Author: Smead Capital Management

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes penned his work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Most of the work was trying to strike against the consensus of economics. Many in the intellectual communities of the west believed in the classical theory of economics. We will describe it briefly by saying that these economists believed that humans function much like an algebraic response to prices or stimuli. Keynes struck out against this notion in his work, allowing thoughts of entrepreneurship, experience and some of the unexplainable human responses to rebut this linear view of human behaviors in economics.

When we are on the road, we like to tell the story of our imaginary bottled water company. The first year we manufacture one million bottles of water at a cost of $1. To attract customers, we sell them for 90 cents per bottle. In our second year we make two million bottles for $1 per bottle. Again, we sell them for 90 cents per bottle.

In financial euphoria episodes, investors become immune to the risks of capital destruction by blacking out to their normal risk aversion. Usually these episodes come from extrapolating the recent past out many years into the future. What can we learn from other disciplines about blacking out? How did this happen with investors in the past and where are risks in the U.S. stock market blacked out today?

We live in a world defined by change. Anyone in doubt need only wait a few days to be reminded. Humans endeavor to measure it, describe it, and develop strategies designed to control it. Sometimes these observations persist long enough for emerging beliefs of changing paradigms or constructs. At the end of cycles, reversion to the mean gets lost as the “new normal” removes old norms from consciousness.